An adjudicated rapist, who was recently held liable by a jury for physically invading a woman’s bodily autonomy, has now taken it upon himself to opine about how government can control women’s bodily autonomy.
Before we even begin to analyze Donald Trump’s announcement of his stance on abortion this week, we do need to stipulate it’s as worthless as soiled tissue. This guy’s only fixed principle is saving his own rear, and whatever he’s saying now about abortion may well be junked if or when it strikes his fancy to mouth something else.
All stipulations aside, it is truly delicious to see Trump taking heat from all sides on an issue that has dogged him politically ever since his hand-crafted high court erased Roe v. Wade. The forced-birth zealots on the extreme right are furious that his newly-announced stance that states should decide abortion rights doesn’t go far enough to control women’s personal lives. Meanwhile, mainstream American leaders, starting with President Biden, are eviscerating him for going too far.
Trump congratulated himself for being “the person responsible” for ending Roe (true), claimed “all legal scholars, both sides” wanted to end Roe (a blatant lie), claimed Democrats support “execution after birth” (a blatant lie), then proceeded to punt the whole thing.
“The states will determine [what to do]. And whatever they decide must be the law of the land. In this case, the law of the state,” Trump said this week. “Many states will be different. Many will have a different number of weeks [when abortion is permitted], or some will have more conservative than others, and that’s what they will be.”
What a wimp. He thinks he can just wash his hands of the mess he made and waddle away.
His cowardice won’t wash with the American mainstream, which solidly supports choice. According to a February poll by the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation, 67 percent of independents – and even 43 percent of Republicans – favor federally-guaranteed abortion rights. Trump is basically saying that if a state wants to oppress women, he’s fine with that. Post-Roe, 14 states already ban virtually all abortions, and seven more impose severe restrictions – in other words, he’s fine with the reality that women in nearly half the states are deprived of personal freedom simply by dint of their geographical status.
Copyright 2024 Dick Polman, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.